The ongoing disasters in Japan could lead to shortages of tech gadgets for American consumers — and headaches for Silicon Valley companies.

Japan is a key producer — and in some cases the dominant one — of many components at the heart of high-tech items such as PCs, smartphones and Apple’s iPad. Production and distribution of many of those parts has been disrupted by the earthquake, tsunami, nuclear crisis and electrical blackouts that have roiled Japan since last week.

Just how significant those disruptions will prove to be is still a matter of educated guesswork. But they probably will affect a broad swath of the tech industry, some industry analysts said, and will grow worse the longer the crisis goes on.

“We’ve never had this much of the electronics supply chain impacted in our history,” said Dale Ford, an analyst who covers the semiconductor industry and supply chain for market research firm IHS iSuppli. “There’s nothing even to compare it to.”

One problem local tech companies face is uncertainty over which factories and industries are affected and to what degree.

“A lot of (valley) companies are trying to assess what’s going on” in Japan, said James Brehm, senior consultant for the mobile industry at consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. “They’re trying to get in contact with organizations that are disrupted over there.”

‘Too early to tell’

Early indications have been mixed. Some production facilities were badly damaged by the earthquake or subsequent tsunami. Others survived those events unscathed but have been hampered by the rolling blackouts that have been imposed to compensate for the loss of the nuclear power stations.

Shin-Etsu, which makes the silicon wafers underlying many of the latest microchips, reportedly has at least two factories offline because of the quake. Texas Instruments said earlier this week that one of its chip factories north of Tokyo suffered severe damages in the earthquake and wouldn’t be able to return to full capacity until September.

In contrast, Toshiba, a key producer of the flash memory found in many smartphones, tablets and other devices, reportedly brought its flash factories — which it jointly owns with SanDisk — back online soon after the quake.

“It’s still too early to tell. It’s probably going to be another week before we have a clear picture of where everything is and where everything is headed,” said Jim Handy, principal analyst and director at Objective Analysis.

But there are reasons for tech companies and customers to be concerned. For example, many parts for the iPad 2 — including its battery, storage, memory and the glass for its touchscreen — are made in Japan, according to iSuppli.

Little excess capacity

It’s not just the iPad that could be affected. About 23 percent to 24 percent of all the semiconductors produced globally are made in Japan, according to iSuppli. And the country’s manufacturing base is even more important when it comes to certain semiconductor parts or materials used to make chips.

About 50 percent of the 300-millimeter silicon wafers — the raw material for the most advanced computer chips — is produced in Japan, according to Gartner, a technology research firm. The country also produces more than half of some key materials used in photolithography, the process that makes chips out of silicon.

Japan also manufactures about 90 percent of an obscure chemical called bismaleimide triazine, which is crucial to the production of the latest microchips used in devices such as smartphones and laptops, said Klaus Rinnen, an analyst who covers semiconductor manufacturing at Gartner.

The risk is not that those parts will not be completely unavailable, Rinnen said. Rather, it’s that shortages will be hard to replace by ramping up manufacturing elsewhere because there’s not much excess capacity to tap into.

“Silicon prices will likely go up,” he said. “And I’m not even talking about (what happens if there’s) a longer-term shortage.”

Larger companies such as Apple should be somewhat protected, although they may experience spot shortages. They typically lock in long-term contracts with multiple suppliers of components, protecting them from price spikes and shortages. But smaller tech manufacturers, who tend to have slim profit margins, could be unable to acquire key components or be forced to pay high prices for them, some analysts said.

Other analysts and tech companies played down the risks. Representatives for Cypress Semiconductor and Nvidia both said they didn’t expect the situation in Japan to have much of an impact in the near term. Meanwhile, Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said, “There is nothing in the supply chain to say we can’t meet all of our commitments to our customers. We think our first-line suppliers came through (the quake) in reasonably good shape.”

Troy Wolverton writes the Tech Files column and covers consumer technology as the personal technology columnist for the Bay Area News Group. Previously, he covered Apple and the consumer electronics industry. Earlier, he reported on technology, business and financial issues for TheStreet.com and CNET News.com.

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